We let it get really lax on meta for historical reasons and it’s resulted in this. Not good for any of us. It’s not going to be a night and day change and nor will it occur overnight, but more attention is being paid to comments.

At that point, I took it as a single incident and just maybe a bit more strict rather than a policy change and moved on (was not even involved in that discussion). Assuming that as these were two mods arguing about policy that I would hear about it before it was implemented.

However, later more comments were deleted which were clarifying an issue (the back & forth was about 4 comments - not exactly extended discussion) or interpretation of what an employee meant in relation to the actual answer itself. However, a single comment (giving only one side of the view of the issue) was left - now without any context (the owner self-deleted it after this was pointed out).

Then, a third set of comments were deleted (again, no moving to chat) and I'll just echo Mark's comment:

Comments on Meta have always been used for extended discussion, no matter what the rules say. I understand from your recent comments in chat that you feel you've been remiss in not being more active on Meta and enforcing civility here, but if your view of when it's reasonable to delete stuff is going to be "any comment discussion is liable for deletion at any time, no justification required", that should at least be discussed in a Meta post first. Such an approach would be radical; comment moderation on Stack Overflow (main and meta) has always been conservative in the past.

And add that in SE as a whole, I've never heard of deleting comments due to "extended discussion" though certainly seen this implemented as a reason for moving to chat.

The response by the moderator was: "if you have anything else to say about this post it on meta as a question". So, I will do just that and ask these questions:

TLDR;

Has there been a significant change in the focus on deleting comments (over moving to chat or even just leaving) by the consensus of the community moderators? Further, has the change been such that we should consider this a full change in moderation policy (which deletion of any extended conversation would certainly be)?

Note: on smaller sites I've used we have an automatic option to move to chat after 5 comments or so. I don't mind if this is policy - I would just like to be aware and it is very different from deleting them

FYI for anyone missing the context of comments in chat, George asked the OP to bring this here, lest a productive conversation happen in a place where people are extremely unlikely to ever happen upon it.
– Tim Post♦Jul 30 at 3:43

5

I would like to see this answered. We've been going through a slight upheaval on Meta recently (well, a little more than usual), and I've started to see some division among the moderators. While I appreciate that they are fellow users and must be allowed to express opinions, the moderating itself needs to come from a place of unity. It only makes things worse if they start bickering in public about mod actions. Also, if they have received any new directives from the CMs, it would be good to keep that transparent. If one of the old, trusted mods has time, we could use a little reassurance.
– Andrew MyersJul 30 at 3:55

@TimPost also true. Though to be honest, I was hesitant to post because I trusted that if our mod team decided a new policy was needed or even just that one would need stricter enforcement they would announce it themselves (I've never seen them not "let it be known" in some way with policies changes). So did not want to cause drama when I just needed to wait a bit for the notice - but it was moving into excessive and I was seeing no assurance that this policy would be clarified (in chat) so here we go....again....down that lonely dusty road....
– JGreenwellJul 30 at 4:00

1

@JGreenwell I honestly don't know if they have. However, policy shifts seldom happen atomically; there's usually a discussion or three after people notice something, at which point they explain it (and, possibly, that it's still being worked out). I'll let them answer. Sometimes, from the outside in (even with them being so transparent) stuff gets noticed a little before they're ready to talk to the broader audience about it coherently, mostly because they're still figuring it out.
– Tim Post♦Jul 30 at 4:11

1

@TimPost exactly that's why I wanted to wait - I still trust the mods here and they certainly have a track record of transparency - it was just happening a bit too often to continue to wait
– JGreenwellJul 30 at 4:13

11

Yes to civility, no to deletion of extended discussions. You cannot really discuss in Q&A. If that's really the goal one would need to open lots and lots of questions more and post lots and lots of answers more which night become really very small each. This is not practical.
– TrilarionJul 30 at 6:15

16

@Trilarion ...and double-no to selective removal of comments that seems to be (too often) making an impression of a biased approach. This must be the first time when I feel like I can not rely upon mod's diligence in comments cleanup and have to fall back to recording page snapshots in Wayback Machine, to make it easier to review details of comments deletion. Very frustrating
– gnatJul 30 at 7:27

5

Last time I had an issue with George deleting comments (on main, not meta), it was partially blamed on the tooling and volume of comment flags - but I doubt that's relevant here. His answer is about main but is a valuable read nontheless and might give some insight into his opinion of comments in general. Somewhat ironic that the comments under that meta question were deleted by him as well... IMO meta comments should only be deleted in extreme cases and even moving to chat should be done very carefully because it strongly diminishes visibility.
– l4mpiJul 30 at 8:34

2 Answers
2

Currently we're not in 100% agreement as a mod team on how rigorously comments should be cleaned up on Meta. We still don't know what to do with featured posts, so if the Meta community can bear with us while we sort things out, we'd also be grateful.

The community (mods included) has been rocked these past weeks. The mods are still trying to clarify with the employees where we all stand with Stack Overflow (we will let you know as soon as we know anything): What is expected of us as a community? How much of a voice do we have? The removal of the Hot Meta Posts was a big deal and the Stack Overflow employees have taken a stand on what is acceptable on the site.

Part of the issue is we've moved some long comment threads into chatrooms. There's been literally hundreds of comments and the chat rooms have proven more useful in discussing/airing these issues. People are able to have a proper back-and-forth dialogue, and there're plenty of employees and moderators around the chat rooms to help field questions—not that we all have answers.

Due to the sensitivities on the site and the fact we're all reeling from change, there's now more moderators closely moderating Meta, which is a relief, as moderating Meta can be stressful at times. There will always be someone unhappy with what we're doing.

So with the Meta community feeling unheard, and the mods not yet knowing what to do on the site, when more comments are being cleaned up, it can feel like censorship and I totally understand that. The comments under this post on Meta Stack Exchange (MSE) are being rigorously moderated and cleaned up, and I have felt powerless and at times targeted over that, so it's very easy to feel like we're being shut down.

But all that the mods are doing there (and here) is trying to keep things calm; we're in a bit of a difficult situation.

There's a lot more post and comment flags on Meta of late. Particularly under posts where the discussion has been moved to chat, people are flagging and asking for comments to be moved to chat or deleted. The most annoying issue about this is that we cannot move them into the same chat room that was initially created. So in some ways it's just easier to delete the comments.

People will notice some comment flags have been declined and then later the comments have been deleted; the effects of having more boots on the ground with regard to the flag queue. I'm sorry if that's confusing. One thing I do know is that all the mods care immensely about the site, and we're doing everything in our capacity to communicate with our community and each other. We want people to be OK and to feel heard. The mods are also very tired, as I'm sure we all are. None of us want anymore drama; we want results.

The moderators are discussing Meta and we will be getting posts out here to keep people informed.

This is well written. The best thing we can do as a community is work to improve ourselves and how we conduct our business, and if we continually strive for more on-topic and constructive conversations, the natural by-product of that will be we're listened to more. Nothing changes in terms of giving or receiving feedback; the only thing we're stressing is the best place to give permanent feedback or raise issues is in a meta question or as a response to a meta question in an answer.
– George Stocker♦Jul 30 at 14:54

1

Re: "The most annoying issue about this is that we cannot move them into the same chat room that was initially created. " I'm just spitballing an idea here, but I'm not well versed in the mechanics of chat so I'm not sure this is doable or easy: Can the comments be moved to chat into a new room, then the comments moved from that room to the old room? Unless the UI doesn't allow for that or it makes it horribly inconvenient, I would think that's a simple way to move all the comments into the same chat.
– Davy MJul 30 at 19:33

3

@DavyM No. The UI only allows moderators to move comments to chat once, ever, on that specific question or answer. Subsequent comments must just be deleted. There's... actually one teeny exception. If users create a chat room for a post, moderators can still create a second room... and then combine the two much as you suggest. It gets really weird because the timestamps are wonky... but it's at least possible.
– Catija♦Jul 30 at 21:02

2

I'm marking this as accepted because the main question was "is there a change with how all the moderators are handling comments" and this at least answers that question (it answers it with "we're working on figuring it out" but that's an answer and probably the only honest answer that can be given right now :) and because I still don't get the point of the other answer except "I'm going to do what I want regardless of other moderators" and I asked about all moderators
– JGreenwellAug 4 at 15:55

@JGreenwell point of clarification; in your question and in your comment above you ask for consensus from all moderators, in this comment you explicitly say you don’t need consensus from all moderators: what is it precisely that you’re looking for? meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/387843/…
– George Stocker♦Aug 4 at 18:46

1

@GeorgeStocker I would like to see consensus - I will accept that full consensus is not how the mod team works (because that is simply the way it is). I had hoped that even if not every mod agrees that they would agree to follow some basic level of policy - but currently that is certainly not what we see. (so accepting this because it actually speaks to moderators not agreeing but working on it while yours basically gives a policy which only you seem to be following and I have seen mods actively argue against: esp. on the posts which have followed this).
– JGreenwellAug 4 at 20:51

1

Honestly the last sentence is what makes this the accepted answer: The moderators are discussing Meta and we will be getting posts out here to keep people informed.
– JGreenwellAug 4 at 20:51

@JGreenwell and you know I always do my best to keep people informed. The mod team is still working out differences in moderation style and we will let everyone know as soon as we do
– Yvette Colomb♦Aug 6 at 3:28

@YvetteColomb yes there is a deleted comment on my main post between me and Tim (I really don't know why those were deleted they were about the reason behind the post & therefore on-topic) where I stated that this was due to the repeated nature of the deletions more than a lack of trust that something wasn't said (basically, that I wouldn't have posted it and waited for a mod if not for the number of deletions being seen)
– JGreenwellAug 6 at 4:03

@JGreenwell I undeleted that comment thread. Thanks for bringing it to my attention
– Yvette Colomb♦Aug 6 at 4:13

I’ve been a part of Meta since the very beginning, and UserVoice before that. I was elected as a moderator in 2012, a few scant months after my first daughter was born.

She’s now 7.

We have had extraordinary blessings as a community; I can’t point to another internet community where we have focused conversations and debate around issues and generally held up against the limits of the software powering this community.

We’ve also been quite insular for some time. Anyone else remember this?

Here we are, ten years later, and the premise in Jeff’s blog post has come to fruition:

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of the meta. It's seductive in a way that is subtly but deeply dangerous. It's far easier to introspect and write about the process of, say .. blogging .. than it is to think up, research, and write about an interesting new topic on your blog. Meta-work becomes a reflex, a habit, an addiction, and ultimately a replacement for real productive work. It's something I think everyone should watch out for, whatever walk of life or career you happen to have. In fact, I've come up with a zingy little catch phrase to help people remind themselves, and their coworkers, how toxic this stuff can be -- meta is murder.

I made a mistake and I compounded that mistake. When I first became a community elected moderator, I tried to clean up comments in Meta and get rid of the off topic and non-constructive comments. I was chided by a CM, no less. So we all let stuff go that we shouldn’t have. And that encouraged more of the same. I compounded that mistake by leaving meta for years due to how non-constructive it had become.

It was only on a lark that I even saw the Meta post detailing that HMP was removed. Basically all of the events for the past two years I’ve been absent from. I’ve moderated Stack Overflow proper, but consciously stayed away from Meta. And now we are at a place where we’ve been told that the behavior on Meta has pushed people away and reduced Meta’s effectiveness to a point where Meta is no longer representative of the larger community.

We as moderators have to own our failure. If we had done what our function says on the tin and moderated Meta, we would not be here. 10 years of Meta being the Wild West wouldn’t have happened.

There’s no way to say for sure but I believe Meta would have been more welcoming, and with any luck would have been more representative of the community.

So we have to own all of that, and we are really at a crossroads: do we continue to do things as we’ve always done, and predictably get the same result we’ve always gotten? Or do we try something else? Constructive discussion and debates, and limiting and moderating non-constructive and off-topic comments?

It should be no surprise that there as many different opinions as there are moderators. I’m also willing to bet Shog and Tim have a slightly different view as well. We all agree (I think) that where we are as a meta community is unsustainable, but we haven’t all agreed on a solution; partly because I don’t know that we can. Until we accept our role individually and as a community in recent events, there will be no possible way to achieve some vaunted sense of consensus. We’ve gone so far past accepting positions and good faith arguments that doing things like deleting non constructive comments (that also happen to be critical of people at SE or what SE has done) has caused people to believe that SE told us to do it!

Here’s what moderating Meta looks like at the moment:

removing the egregious non constructive remarks

Asking for extended discussions to move to chat or moving extended discussions there

Removing off topic comments to ensure the constructive comments are better seen

Asking (as we always have) that if you have a viewpoint and argument, to post it as an answer. Allow it to stand on its own. Build ideas. It is certainly far easier to tear other people’s ideas down without providing your own but we’ve seen where that has gotten us. If you use comments to engage in protracted debates, you shouldn’t expect that to have a long shelf life.

Of course, all of this is up to each moderator and up to their judgment. That’s why we elected them. Some moderators choose not to moderate Meta at all, and others choose to spend a good amount of time here. Both are valid approaches, and you’re not going to see overnight differences because we still have the same people power as before.

As always, if you post a question or an answer, that has far more permanence than a comment; and much like how modern deliberative bodies operate, allows for a far more constructive debate to take place on the question being raised itself.

I haven't seen the comments that were deleted, and I'm not going to dig them up and rehash them here, but if we can't trust moderators to post comments without worrying about another moderator deleting them, then who can we trust?
– Robert Harvey♦Jul 30 at 14:03

29

Frankly, I'm getting tired of comments being legislated. First, we created comments to keep questions out of answers. Then we created chat to keep discussions out of comments. The new thing seems to be to keep answers out of comments. So now I can't help someone unless I create a carefully-crafted, fully-curated answer that meets all of the stringent requirements of these sites to qualify as an acceptable answer? Jesus.
– Robert Harvey♦Jul 30 at 14:13

5

Joel has stated in a webcast that Stack Overflow should have never had comments in the first place, but that it's too late now. His proposed solution is for the system to wipe all newly-posted comments after seven days. Seems as if we don't want people to talk at all.
– Robert Harvey♦Jul 30 at 14:15

9

I don't need to see them. That's kinda the whole point I'm making. I've seen Bhargav's work; I trust him to say the right thing.
– Robert Harvey♦Jul 30 at 14:17

9

I'm not downvoting this, but I don't think this was anyone's failure. Many things contributed to this, but the biggest one standing out was, this system only worked when the public voice of the product also totally owned changes to the product and what got checked in. Once that was no longer true, it was just a matter of time before dysfunction and disconnect set in. I put the blame on us, even though we saw something was wrong early-on, we just didn't identify the root of it. Everything else is a symptom of that.
– Tim Post♦Jul 30 at 14:25

2

@RobertHarvey "So now I can't help someone unless I create a carefully-crafted, fully-curated answer that meets all of the stringent requirements of these sites to qualify as an acceptable answer?" funny you say that, since most of you seems to consider anything posted in the answer box to be "an attempt to answer the question".
– BraiamJul 30 at 14:30

2

@Braiam: Nice swipe, but that really does belong in another post, not here. I'm happy to explain it. Again. For the umpteenth time. Just not here. tl;dr: stop using canned flags on borderline posts and make an attempt to actually communicate.
– Robert Harvey♦Jul 30 at 14:32

8

@RobertHarvey I don't listen to podcasts but I learn history instead - and I learned that SO have had no comments in the first place (it started without comments) - and how spectacularly this failed. And this taught me that it could be unwise to aim for "perfect" solutions that involve indiscriminate deletion of comments, no matter how much I would wish them go. Based on what I learned I rather prefer compromising approaches, like timed collapsing at main site and immediate collapsing at meta
– gnatJul 30 at 14:42

2

@JGreenwell I won't speak for other mods, but I don't think you'll find moderator consensus on this issue just because we've been discussing this in chat but not all moderators participated in that discussion; and we don't really 'vote' on things as moderators, it's not really a binding democracy inasmuch as it's each moderator making their thoughts known and each moderator determining how that affects their day to day actions.
– George Stocker♦Jul 30 at 14:44

14

@GeorgeStocker I don't need full consensus but this constitutes reversing a long standing policy - it needs more than just an "I'm doing it" reply after removing comments (I should not have needed to make this post - it should have been announced or discussed as mods are suppose to represent the community) & some level of consensus does not mean "everyone agrees" but it does mean you should at least be at the level of "not being seen arguing in public with each other"
– JGreenwellJul 30 at 14:48

4

Thank you for this answer. I downvoted it because I disagree with your assertions and various parts of your general opinion of the topic (e.g. that most comments should be answers), but I appreciate the fact that you posted this nontheless.
– l4mpiJul 30 at 14:48

2

I for one and very happy to see you active on here. I hope you pace yourself to take the heat. It's not easy - preaching to the choir - you've been here longer than me. And as for your baby now 7, enjoy every moment. When they're young it feels like they'll be young forever and then you turn around and they're grown up. Thanks for posting this George
– Yvette Colomb♦Jul 30 at 15:00

It seems like this was a failure, despite what Tim said. A failure on the mods' part, a failure on the CM who chided you, a continued failure on both parties part, and then a failure on yours to check with other moderators before you began anew your particular vision for how comments on Meta should be moderated. One thing I notice here is you come close to apologizing, but when you talk about failure here, you shift exclusively to "we". Are you willing to acknowledge that, while the post above is asking in general, the impetus for it is exclusively your mod actions, not other mods'? 1/2
– TylerHJul 30 at 15:25

15

Like l4mpi, I appreciate you posting this, though I also downvoted it for the same reasons -- disagreement with the assertions and the opinions you've put forth. There is a clear use & need for healthy comment functionality on the site. Unless there's a revamp of comment functionality to include toggling/hiding, threading, and/or other needed sub-functionality, that clear use & need won't go away. Deleting comments wholesale in spite of that will reduce the worth and quality of the site; it is part of what made SO what it is today - a programming Q&A site that stands alone in value on the web.
– TylerHJul 30 at 15:30